NEW YORK - Legs McNeil remembers the night back in 1975 when he walked into the dingy storefront club perched in the even dingier Bowery neighborhood. The band onstage, four guys in leather jackets and torn jeans, was the Ramones. McNeil sat at a nearby table, watching their set with Lou Reed.

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It was unforgettable. But as McNeil would soon discover, it was just a typical night at CBGB's, the club that spawned punk rock while launching the careers of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Blondie, the Talking Heads and the Ramones.

"Every night was memorable, except I don't remember 'em," said a laughing McNeil, co-author of the punk rock history "Please Kill Me."

After Sunday, memories are all that will remain when the cramped club with its capacity of barely 300 people goes out of business after 33 years. Although its boom years are long gone, CBGB's remained a Manhattan music scene fixture: part museum, part barroom, home to more than a few rock and roll ghosts.

The club didn't exit without a fight. An assortment of high-profile backers, including E Street Band guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt, battled to keep the legendary club open. But in the end, it was a simple landlord-tenant dispute — and owner Hilly Kristal saw the handwriting on the club's dank walls.

"I knew the closing was inevitable, because my lawyers said, `You can't win this case. The law is that your lease is up, and they don't even need a reason to put you out,'" said Kristal.

Kristal sits beneath a platinum record from Joan Jett, a CBGB's clock and a few of the endless band stickers that blanket the interior. Kristal, who is battling lung cancer, wears a black and white CBGB's T-shirt with a matching baseball cap.

He once managed the Village Vanguard, the renowned jazz club where he booked acts like Miles Davis. Things were a bit different at his new club: "In rock, the bands were creative — but at first, they didn't play so well."

The first punk-scene band at Kristal's nightspot was Television, soon followed by Patti Smith. Punk poet Smith will play the closing night as well, a booking that Kristal described as effortless.

Smith isn't the only veteran playing one last gig. The '80s hardcore band Bad Brains and the '70s punks the Dictators are both scheduled for the final week. Blondie's Debbie Harry and Chris Stein are also stopping by.

When Kristal opened his doors in December 1973, CBGB's stood for country, bluegrass and blues — three musical styles that wound up in short supply. Tommy Ramone, drummer for the Ramones, recalled how a new breed of bands gravitated to the space.

"At that time, there were no places to play in New York," Ramone said last year. "It was a very dead time in New York City, doldrums all around. But CBGB's allowed bands — original bands, no less — the freedom to go and play and do whatever they pleased."

Kristal plans to move the club far from its roots with a new CBGB's in Las Vegas. The owner plans to strip the current club down to the bare walls, bringing as much of it to Nevada as possible.

"We're going to take the urinals," he said. "I'll take whatever I can. The movers said, `You ought to take everything, and auction off what you don't want on eBay.' Why not? Somebody will."

Even a longtime CBGB's devotee like McNeil thinks the best advice for the 74-year-Kristal is go west, old man.

"I always said Hilly should go to Vegas," said McNeil. "Girls with augmented breasts playing Joey Ramone slot machines. It would become an institution."

THE DAY THE MUSIC (STORE) DIED R.I.P. TOWER RECORDS, AND THE JOY OF BROWSING MUSIC STORES

TOWER RECORDS HAS has gone the way of the vinyl LP, both victims of technology's unceasing pursuit of change and convenience.

Tower, once one of the most powerful retail entities in the music industry, was sold last week to a liquidator for $134.3 million. The price is almost laughable when you consider in the mid 1990s, Tower racked up annual sales of $1 billion.

But then the Internet matured. Young listeners found glee in file sharing and digital music. Wal-Mart and other "big box" stores lured customers with discounted-priced CDs. Tower tried to compete, but fumbled and lost.
While independent record stores still exist, Tower's demise is really the death of the music-buying experience that has ruled almost since Thomas Edison cut the first record in history (his sound recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb") in 1877.

More than a retailer has been lost. Record stores made buying music an event. Like a good restaurant, a record store was a destination place. (Remember Third Street Jazz?) You'd look for one CD in the bin, you could come across a gem in another. In record stores, you could ask questions; clerks were often encyclopedic in their knowledge.

Our senses played a huge part in enjoying record stores, especially when LPs ruled years ago: The sight of creatively designed album covers, enhanced by the cover's texture, the smell of the plastic. Liner notes were beautifully written, and didn't require a magnifying glass to read.

On-line buying is cold. The emphasis is on product, not context. There's the play list, a few lines of a review (which could have been written by a ringer, or worse, a half-literate teenager) and that's it.

Just as newspapers that were slow to grasp the importance of the Internet and its heavy use by the young readers it so desired, so too was Tower and the music industry slow to pick up on the concept of change and convenience. The industry will have to succeed in the world it once shunned.
Today, iPods and mp3 devices rule. They fall in line behind the Walkman, portable cassette players, 8-track players and transistor radios. And so we hit the "delete" button on Tower. But we'll still miss those album covers. Sometimes what was inside didn't matter as much as what was outside. That, and the trip to the record store, made the music buying experience special.